


Here, Or In A Jaeger

by OldWomanJosie



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-28
Updated: 2014-10-28
Packaged: 2018-02-22 23:24:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2525528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldWomanJosie/pseuds/OldWomanJosie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They tell me that I looked at Gipsy Danger the way Captain Kirk looked at the Enterprise. It’s funny and they laugh, but when I watch the ancient show I can see their point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here, Or In A Jaeger

Every so often, a machine comes along that so enchants a generation that they can think of nothing else. For most people, it’s a hobby. For some, it’s a way of life. Some men have ships, some have cars, some have planes, some even have spaceships. 

Mine was the Jaeger.

They tell me that I looked at Gipsy Danger the way Captain Kirk looked at the Enterprise. It’s funny and they laugh, but when I watch the ancient show I can see their point. Kirk looks at his ship likes she’s the only thing in the world that really matters. He lives for her, fights for her, and she is his only love.

It’s a bond few people can understand. It’s just a machine, they say, and laugh because I can’t explain how much more she is. Gipsy wasn’t just some monster-mashing machine. She was mine. I knew her inside and out, I could feel when the gyros were off even slightly from the vibrations under my feet. Even more, I could feel her in my mind.

That sounds crazy. A Jaeger is only a machine. But spend enough time with a machine and you get a sense of its personality. God, this is hard to explain. Gipsy Danger had rhythyms and she had moods and no one knew her better than I did. Except maybe Yancy. 

When Marshall Pentecost pulled me off the wall to bring me here, he asked me a question. Would you rather die here, on the wall, or fighting in a Jaeger. And that was when he knew he had me, we both knew it. Pentecost had been a pilot, he’d been a Jaeger jockey just like me. But not like me. He knew me, knew the love I had for piloting Jaegers, and he knew I could never stay away. In a way I hated him for that. But I can’t fault a man for using what he had, and he had me pegged.

Chuck Hansen was the same way. I sometimes feel that he hated me because we were so alike. I saw myself in him, the cocky kid who lived and breathed for his Jaeger. Striker was a beauty, I’d give him that. But my Gipsy…

Sorry, I’m rambling. It’s hard for me not to talk about it, the glory days. It’s stupid to call them glory days, with so much destruction and fear and death. But I was a Jaeger pilot then. It was all I was born to be, all I ever wanted. Now I’m just a busted up old man with a handful of memories that aren’t even mine. There’s no place for Jaeger pilots any more. Why would there be, we served our purpose and that purpose is done.

There are other programs spawning out of the Jaegers, mechs to rebuild the cities we lost to the kaiju. You could pilot one of them, they tell me, we could use you. That’s laughable. That’s like telling a racecar driver to drive a dump truck, that it will be the same. It’s never going to be the same.

And while I can live without her…

I never wanted to.

I don’t know who I am without my Jaeger.

I’m just Raleigh Becket now. And what good is he.


End file.
